Jeff Jones (activist)

Jeff Jones
Jones speaking at City University of New York (2007)
Born	Jeffrey Carl Jones (1947-02-23) February 23, 1947 (age 70) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Known for	Student activist Students for a Democratic Society leader Weather Underground leader

Jeff Jones (born February 23, 1947) is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.

Jeffrey Carl "Jeff" Jones, the first child of Albert and Millie Jones, was born February 23, 1947 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Four years later, the expanding Jones family moved to the Los Angeles San Fernando Valley, and his father eventually settled into a career at the Walt Disney Company in 1954. Having a father who worked for Disney enhanced young Jones’ popularity among his peers; with home screenings of the latest Mickey Mouse cartoons, a featured event at his birthday parties.

During World War II, his father, a pacifist and conscientious objector, was assigned for the duration of the war, to a civilian work camp in the Sierra Nevada, California. When his church abandoned him for not serving in the military, the Quakers in the camp embraced him, and he later immersed his family in their traditional ways. Uniforms in the Jones home (Boy Scouts, etc.) were not permitted; the YMCA would have to suffice. This minor restriction was no impediment, as young Jones (hereafter, Jones) excelled in academics, cross country , and school politics (he was the student body president of his high school).

By mid-June 1969, SDS held what would turn out to be its final convention. Previous efforts/tactics to bring the war to an end and factional disputes over the organization’s goals and direction allowed an influential and militant bloc of SDS’ hierarchy to seize control of the body. Building on their earlier support for the Black Liberation Movement in the United States and the Vietnamese, the Weatherman faction at the convention issued a statement calling for a revolution in this nation to fight and defeat U.S. imperialism within, and outside the country. Emerging from the fractious convention, Jeff Jones, Bill Ayers, and Mark Rudd, all signatories to what came to be known as the Weatherman statement, constituted the organization’s new leadership group.